9/20/09 Animal Kingdom Trip Review

[Sorria]

We packed up to head to Animal Kingdom this past Saturday. The usual went, me, my mother and my adoptive sister. However, in addition, this time my sisters' friend also went. This friend hadn't been to disney since 2000 and had never been to Animal Kingdom before.

We got to the park before opening hours and were showing the parking guard our Annual Pass for our parking. To our surprise he took our ticket and started writing something down in the guard booth. We were dumbfounded what he could be doing since they never actually take our ticket, they usually just glance at it and tell us to go on in. To our surprise, the man in the booth gave us our ticket back and a Dream Parking Pass! This was the first Magical Moment we'd ever won coming to Disney since they started the celebration.....and this being my first trip back to the World since I broke my ankle, I was grateful for it at the end of the day when I didn't have to walk back as far.

We had intentions of doing Expedition Everest, but my sister and her friend took one look at the ride once we got in the parking lot and said no way and chickened out, so we just skipped Everest. Instead our first stop was Killimanjaro Safaris and the Pangani Trail. Next we headed over to Camp Minnie Mickey and did the Pocahontas and Lion King show. Big raves for Legend of the Lion King from the first-time guest. We then had lunch at Pizzafari. My mother and I had Caesar salads which were typical salads and my sister and her friend both had the cheese pizza, which they said was ok. After lunch we did It's Tough To Be A Bug and were disappointed that the stinkbug smell was noat working so our company did not get to experience the full effects of the attraction. Then we did the Nemo Musical and headed over to Dinoland to do the Dinosaur attraction. Big thumbs up from the first timer on Dinosaur as well, this was her favorite attraction. Sister and her friend we quite disappointed that the Primeval Whirl was closed for refurbishment the day we were there. By the time we got out of Dinosaur, we'd missed the last bird show of the day, but went over to Asia to do the Jungle Trek (guest really liked seeing the tigers) and watched the parade. It was actually all of our first time seeing the parade. It was pretty neat.....what I could see of it because of people who kept standing in front of the bench I sitting on while I was trying to film it.

After this, we went back out to the parking lot and drove the car to Epcot since Animal Kingdom would be closing in a half hour. Our guest only bought a day pass, but we took the monorail over so she could see some of the MK resorts. We had intentions of possibly eating at one of the nicer restaurants for dinner, but our guest only brought $10 for food over at Disney. We ended up eating at Captain Cook's for dinner at the Polynesian. We then took the monorail back to Epcot after we'd had dinner and went down to the Polynesian's beach.

All in all we had a good time and our guest described her experience at Animal Kingdom as "awesome". The only bad things I could say about our trip is that I was in quite a bit of pain with my ankle by the middle of the day and wished we had rented a wheelchair or ECV, just for the periods of long walking. That, and we had a really big scare when we were on our way home. We were followed for nearly two hours by another vehicle (my mother didn't look to see what the vehicle looked like or who was driving it), until we finially lost them at an intersection. I'd seen two guys in a silver truck that kept pulling alongside us on the road and staring at us, but don't know if these were the same people my mother saw following the car later on during our drive home or not. Anyway it was a really creepy experience and we're thankful we got home in one piece. Next time we won't be staying over as late (8:00 pm) or we'll be staying over at one of the resorts and coming back the next morning.

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Edit: lol, this trip was 9/20/08, sorry for the typo in the title.

[lilo88]

Sounds like a fun day, sorry your ankle hurt! My ankle and back hurt half way through the day too so I feel your pain. The car following you sounded creepy! Glad you got home safe!

[GIOny]

Sounds great Sorria, but what exactly is a Dream Parking Pass? Whatever it is it sounds good Sorry your ankle was bothering you, hope it's feeling better. That is creepy about that car following you, that has happened to me before and the best thing to do is to either flag down a police car if you see one or drive to a police station. Glad to hear you enjoyed the rest of your day

[mini-V]

Glad to hear you had a fun experience; the exception being the strange vehicle following you. I've never heard of the Dream parking pass either. Something else to add to my wish list of YOMD prizes.

[Sorria]

For those that were asking, a Dream Parking Pass is pretty much a card that they give you that pretty much says you have "preferred parking". We were told to follow the blue line and a CM would tell us were to park. I'm assuming its like VIP Parking or reserve CM parking or something. The tram doesn't drop guests off there, but its fairly close to the park enterance where you can walk back just fine.